Ask the pilot

In search of the ever-elusive "truth," the pilot takes on the 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

By Patrick Smith

Read more: Technology & Business, Business, P. Smith, Ask the Pilot, September 11th

May 19, 2006 | As I thought it might, last week's critique of "United 93" drew a fair share of e-mails from Sept. 11 conspiracy subscribers -- as well as several letters from those merely curious about the various allegations now saturating the Web.

If you haven't been paying attention, cyberspace is awash with claims that the 2001 attacks were an inside job. The specific assertions are too numerous and complicated to list here exhaustively. They vary site to site, overlapping, underscoring, complementing and contradicting one another to the point of madness. The Pentagon was struck with a missile, not a 757; the planes that hit the World Trade Center were remotely controlled military craft; the real Flights 11, 175, 77 and 93 never existed, or were diverted to secret bases; controlled demolitions felled the twin towers. And so on. This, the story goes, to make Americans more malleable and subservient to their leaders and the military-industrial establishment (as if we're not already subservient enough).

Conspiracy babble in general is nothing new -- least of all when it comes to airplane tragedies. Maybe you didn't know this, but Pan Am 103 was blown up by the CIA; TWA 800 was downed by an errant U.S. Navy missile; Swissair 111 was destroyed by a giant magnetic pulse; EgyptAir 990 was a practice run for Sept. 11; Paul Wellstone's turboprop was sabotaged by the Republicans; and the crash of American 587 was a terrorist bombing. What's different today is the manner and speed at which the Web allows these notions to propagate. Combine the efficiency of the Internet with the quasi-apocalyptic spectacle of 9/11, with a populace already suspicious of a corrupt, overly secretive administration, and it's no surprise that we're up to our armpits in paranoia and misinformation.

The same technological magic that makes the spread of wild conjecture so effortless should, you would think, make countering and dismissing it no less easy. Strictly speaking, indeed it does. But it all depends who's paying attention. The fact is, the human proclivity for believing in conspiracies is a lot stronger these days than our proclivity for analyzing and debating them. Maybe that's human nature, or maybe it's some perverse/inverse fallout of technology. Either way, there are lots more people around who are hungry to make us believe something than make us not believe something. With respect to Sept. 11, a pro-conspiracy Web site is certainly a lot more exciting, and will garner a lot more hits, than an anti-conspiracy Web site. Both kinds are out there, but it's the conspiracy traffickers, regardless of their credibility, who believe more passionately in their cause, and consequently garner more attention.

It's not beyond reason that some aspects of the 2001 attacks deserve more scrutiny than the 9/11 Commission lavished on them. But those who most urgently wish us to believe so have done themselves no favors by expanding the breadth of their contentions beyond all plausibility. Depending which version you listen to, the critiques of the official story range anywhere from compelling to dubious to totally lunatic. OK, I'm genuinely curious about why the surveillance tapes from the Sheraton Hotel near the Pentagon were confiscated, and why their contents were never made public. On the other hand, I'm told that the aircraft that struck the World Trade Center were actually artificial images projected by laser, and that the "real" flights never existed. At this point, virtually every minute of the 9/11 story is ensnared by one or more versions of a government plot.

The "truth," if such a thing exists beyond what already is known, isn't liable to be so fancy. Why would any hoax be so incredibly Byzantine, and thus prone to unravel? Disappearing planes, emulated phone calls from phantom passengers -- this is sci-fi. In the meantime, if any facets of the attacks were truly the work of some PSYOPS skulduggery -- whether the intentional murder of Americans or, as some maintain, a willingness to ignore intelligence and allow an al-Qaida plot to unfold -- the schemers have all the cover they need. Five minutes with a keyboard and mouse and you're privy to more feverish speculation than the old Grassy Knollers ever could have dreamed of.

How much of it is compelling and potentially useful? Don't ask me. There's so much flak out there, it's difficult to tell what's genuinely mysterious and worthy of a closer look, and what's nonsense. I propose a conspiracy theory that the conspiracy theories are themselves part of the conspiracy, intended by the conspirators to discredit the idea of there being a conspiracy -- and to divide and conquer those who might sleuth out the truth (see the link to Jim Hoffman's page at the end of this article).

Confusion aside, I can tackle a few of the more commonly heard myths that pertain to the airplanes and their pilots, point by point.